THE PERCEPTUAL THEORY OF PAIN: ANOTHER LOOK

The essential logical deficiency of the perceptual theory of pain, as I tried to show in my paper,¹ is that feeling pain cannot be perceiving anything. The conceptual framework that would make it possible for us to understand "feel" in this use to be a perception concept does not exist. The concept of a glimpse, which George Pitcher relies upon to supply this framework,²cannot begin to do so because it is a secondary perception concept entirely dependent upon that of seeing. This primary concept of visual perception is tied up with actions and supporting concepts like looking, glancing, gazing, glimpsing, watching, and the like. These are different ways in which one's visual perceiving may be characterized. Without the primary concept and the actions connected with it, there would be nothing to characterize. The word "feel" in contexts involving pain is not a perception concept and efforts to make it one are doomed to fail. The supporting actions and concepts do not exist.     

ALTERNATE METHODS OF ESTIMATING THE DOLLAR VALUE OF PERFORMANCE

The standard deviation of performance quality measured in dollars, SD$ , is critical to calculating the utility of personnel decisions. A popular technique for obtaining SD$ calls for supervisor estimates of the dollar value of performance at different levels. In many cases supervisors can base their estimates on the cost of contracting out the various levels of performance. Estimation problems can arise, however, in contexts where contracting out is not possible, such as in government organizations without private industry counterparts. Estimation problems may also exist where individual salary is only a small percentage of the value of the performance to the organization or of the equipment operated. This paper presents two strategies for estimating the value of performance and for determining SD$ by considering the changes in the numbers and performance levels of system units which lead to increased aggregate performance. One hundred U.S. Army tank commanders provided data about their jobs for these two strategies as well as for the supervisor estimation and salary percentage strategies. The new strategies appear to provide more appropriate and acceptable values of SD$ for those complex, expensive systems where dollar values of performance are less easily estimated.     

急诊医疗中的知情同意问题

急诊医疗中的知情同意似乎与通常的临床情形不同,它不需要完全的知情同意,甚至可以被免除。这一特点可能给人以一种印象,即在急诊情况下对知情同意的考量,或可与其他情形有所不同。其实急诊情形下之所以出现知情同意的例外或免除,并非知情同意原则在急诊情况下不适用,或者是知情同意原则做出了让步。真正的原因是,知情同意在急诊治疗中往往以特殊或不同的形式表现出来。     

Intuitions in physics

This paper is an exploration of the role of intuition in physics. The ways in which intuition is appealed to in physics are not well understood. To the best of my knowledge, there is no analysis of the different contexts in which we might appeal to intuition in physics, nor is there any analysis of the different potential uses to which intuition might be put. In this paper I look to provide data that goes some way to giving a sense of the different contexts in which intuition is appealed to in physics. As I note in the conclusion, there is still much work to be done but I hope that the work here provides us with a first step in the journey to properly understand the use to which intuitions are put in physics and science more generally.     

ORGANISATIONAL AND EDUCATIONAL INTERNAL IMPEDIMENTS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS: CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES

Our psychoanalytic discipline originated, has evolved and is still located within a congregational network that blends and binds together, in an inextricable and contradictory way, the missionary mandates and commendations of a 'movement' and a 'cause' with the inherent prerogatives and functions of academic professions and sciences. In this paper the author explores the consequential past and present impedimenta of this organisational and educational syncretism, for six fundamental dimensions of action for psychoanalysis. Subsequently, the nature of a proposition is delineated, suggesting a reorganisation, local and international, to address what the author visualises as five of our most pressing contemporary challenges: a) an autonomous university educational model, freed from regressive societal-political inertias, enabling us to abandon our seclusive monasticism; b) the consolidation of an epistemological frame of reference, idiographic and nomothetically substantiated against our cumulative inductivism, which is the seedbed of our sectarianism, cross-sterilisation and pseudo-ecumenism; c) local and external educational and professional systems of accreditation and certification, independent from affiliation and membership privileges of our supraordinate ecclesia; d) social relevance and community presence, moving away from our meaningless organisational and educational cloistering; and e) a local and international functional and interdependent reorganisation, in the context of sovereignty and integrity, in contrast to our prevalently crusading and indoctrinating homogamous pathological co-dependency. The author concludes that only a harmonisation of objectives and administrative structure might loosen the talons of faith that keep us retrogressively tied to our past.     

A TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS OF COMPLIANCE-GAINING BEHAVIOR

This study investigated how persuasive agents modify their compliance-gaining message strategy selection when they are confronted with noncompliant male and female persuasive targets in a variety of relational contexts. Based on instrumental learning theory, it was hypothesized that persuasive agents in noninterpersonal contexts would respond to noncompliant persuasive targets by increasing their preference for punishment-oriented message strategies and decreasing their preference for reward-oriented message strategies, whereas persuasive agents in interpersonal contexts would increase their preference for reward and punishment-oriented message strategies. Results confirmed the hypothesis. Moreover, males were expected to respond to noncompliant persuasive targets with more punishment-oriented strategies than females, and females were expected to use more rewarding strategies to secure compliance from noncompliant persuasive targets. However, results indicated that females responded to noncompliant persuasive targets with more punishment and reward-oriented strategies than males. Results also showed that the effects of persuasive agents' gender on message selection is mediated by the gender of persuasive targets and the duration of the relational consequences.     

REASON-EXPLANATION AND THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND

This paper takes a close look at the kinds of considerations we use to reach agreement in our ordinary (non‐philosophical and non‐theoretical) judgments about a person's reasons for acting, and the following theses are defended. First, considering the circumstances in which the action occurs is often enough to remove our puzzlement as to why someone acts as she does. Second, in those situations where we do need to enquire about the agent's state of mind, this does not, in the normal case, lead us to look for hidden, inner events that are candidates for the causes of her action. Finally, even though there are cases in which the agent's introspections, reflections, and deliberations are relevant to our search for reasons, such cases do not lend support to the idea that reasons are hidden or inner causes of action. This suggests a problem for most philosophical accounts of what it is to act for reasons and for most philosophical accounts of the nature of mental states.     

THE MANAGEMENT OF FAILURE EVENTS: SOME CONTEXTUAL DETERMINANTS OF ACCOUNTING BEHAVIOR

This study sought to examine the impact upon actors' selection of strategies to manage failure events of several contextual factors: characteristics of the reproacher/actor relationship, communicative goal-orientation of the actors, severity of the failure event, character of the reproach for the failure event, and the actors' degree of expressed guilt. Results indicated that actors elected to make no response when they felt less guilt, when there was no overt reproach, when their instrumental goal (securing honoring) was unimportant, and when the failure event was a severe offense. Concessions were used when the reproachers said nothing or projected a concession, when the offense was severe, when the actors' instrumental goal was important, and when they felt guilty. Actors chose to justify their behavior in high intimate situations where their instrumental goal was less important. Refusal to account was most likely to occur when reproachers used an aggravating reproach form, when actors felt unjustly accused, and when reproachers were dominant. Excuses were fairly uniformly distributed across all contexts.     

COULD WE EXPERIENCE THE PASSAGE OF TIME?

It is usually taken for granted that we could experience the passage of time. Since it seems to us that we experience the passage of time it is therefore assumed that we have prima facie reason to believe that time passes. But this is false; the passage of time could not be an object of experience because it could not cause, shape or influence temporal experience in any way. After explaining each premise of the argument I discuss several objections that are likely to be raised. I also discuss some related epistemic arguments against the passage of time given by Huw Price and David Braddon‐Mitchell along with objections raised against them by Tim Maudlin and Peter Forrest respectively.     

AN EPISTEMICALLY DISTANT GOD? A CRITIQUE OF JOHN HICK'S RESPONSE TO THE PROBLEM OF DIVINE HIDDENNESS*

God is thought of as hidden in at least two ways. Firstly, God's reasons for permitting evil, particularly instances of horrendous evil, are often thought to be inscrutable or beyond our ken. Secondly, and perhaps more problematically, God's very existence and love or concern for us is often thought to be hidden from us (or, at least, from many of us on many occasions). But if we assume, as seems most plausible, that God's reasons for permitting evil will (in many, if not most, instances) be impossible for us to comprehend, would we not expect a loving God to at least make his existence or love sufficiently clear to us so that we would know that there is some good, albeit inscrutable, reason why we (or others) are permitted to suffer? In this paper I examine John Hick's influential response to this question, a response predicated on the notion of ‘epistemic distance’: God must remain epistemically distant and hence hidden from us so as to preserve our free will. Commentators of Hick's work, however, disagree as to whether the kind of free will that is thought to be made possible by epistemic distance is the freedom to believe that God exists, or the freedom to choose between good and evil, or the freedom to enter into a personal relationship with God. I argue that it is only the last of these three varieties of free will that Hick has in mind. But this kind of freedom, I go on to argue, does not necessitate an epistemically distant God, and so the problem of divine hiddenness remains unsolved.     

POOL HALLS, CHIPS, AND WAR GAMES: WOMEN IN THE CULTURE OF COMPUTING

Computers are becoming ubiquitous in our society and they offer superb opportunities for people in jobs and everyday life. But there is a noticeable sex difference in use of computers among children. This article asks why computers are more attractive to boys than to girls and offers a cultural framework for explaining the apparent sex differences. Although the data are fragmentary, the world of computing seems to be more consistent with male adolescent culture than with feminine values and goals. Furthermore, both arcade and educational software is designed with boys in mind. These observations lead us to speculate that computing is neither inherently difficult nor uninteresting to girls, but rather that computer games and other software might have to be designed differently for girls. Programs to help teachers instill computer efficacy in all children also need to be developed.     

What is Genetic Information,and why is it Significant? A Contextual,Contrastive, Approach

abstract Is genetic information of special ethical significance? Does it require special regulation? There is considerable contemporary debate about this question (the ‘genetic exceptionalism’ debate). ‘Genetic information’ is an ambiguous term and, as an aid to avoiding conflation in the genetic exceptionalism debate, a detailed account is given of just how and why ‘genetic information’ is ambiguous. Whilst ambiguity is a ubiquitous problem of communication, it is suggested that ‘genetic information’ is ambiguous in a particular way, one that gives rise to the problem of ‘significance creep’ (i.e., where claims about the significance of certain kinds of genetic information in one context influence our thinking about the significance of other kinds of genetic information in other contexts). A contextual and contrastive methodology is proposed: evaluating the significance of genetic information requires us to be sensitive to the polysemy of ‘genetic information’ across contexts and then examine the contrast in significance (if any) of genetic, as opposed to nongenetic, information within contexts. This, in turn, suggests that a proper solution to the regulatory question requires us to pay more attention to how and why information, and its acquisition, possession and use, come to be of ethical significance.     

AQUINAS AND THE OBLIGATIONS OF MERCY

Contemporary philosophers often construe mercy as a supererogatory notion or a matter of punitive leniency. Yet it is false that no merciful actions are obligatory. Further, it is questionable whether mercy is really about punitive leniency, either exclusively or primarily. As an alternative to these accounts, I consider the view offered by St. Thomas Aquinas. He rejects the claim that we are never obligated to be merciful. Also, his view of mercy is not restricted to legal contexts. For him, mercy's scope is considerably broader, as it concerns a wide range of needs and hardships to which human beings are vulnerable. Such a view, I submit, affords a kind of normative depth lacking in many contemporary accounts. Unlike those views that construe mercy as either a supererogatory or legal concept, Aquinas's account illuminates mercy's obligatory nature and encourages us to make mercy a more salient fixture of our moral lives.     

THE CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF INTELLIGENCE: PIAGET AND THE BAOULÉ*

There are two aspects of Piaget's theory that can be at least partly distinguished: (1) The stage theory, or the development of particular concepts through a series of hierarchical stages; (2) The metatheory, or the interactionist model of adaptation (assimilation and accommodation) that explains the mechanisms of cognitive development. Most cross-cultural research has been based on the first of these aspects, using and adapting “Piagetian tasks ”in various conceptual areas. Some findings of this line of enquiry, and the methodological problems encountered, are briefly reviewed. It is argued that no specific task, nor a combination of them, can be taken to measure a general cognitive level; the tasks measure the attainment of particular concepts rather than “intelligence”. New evidence is presented on the reliability and validity of Piagetian tasks used in a cross-cultural setting. In the second model, intelligence is broadly defined as adaptation to the environment; in this conception it would be reasonable to expect divergent paths of cognitive development in different cultures. In other words, one might need a different Piagetian psychology in each culture, but based on universal deep mechanisms. As a modest contribution to a more “emic ”study of intelligence, the concept of intelligence as defined by the Baoulé of Ivory Coast, n'glouèlě is presented and discussed. Ratings on n'glouèlě and its different components are related to performance on Piagetian tasks in a sample of 8- to 9-year-old rural Baoulé children. The thrust of the paper is to point out once more the cultural relativity of any conception of intelligence, be it from a Piagetian or any other perspective.     

Optimizing Exposure Therapy for Pathological Health Anxiety: Considerations From the Inhibitory Learning Approach

Exposure therapy has demonstrated its efficacy in the treatment of pathological health anxiety—however, psychotherapy research reveals that many patients do not show a clinically significant change. Therefore, improvements are necessary to optimize psychotherapy for pathological health anxiety. Most treatment rationales refer to habituation during exposure as the central mechanism of change. However, there is evidence that extinction learning is mediated by inhibitory learning processes. Targeting these processes may help to improve treatment outcomes in pathological health anxiety. The aim of this review was to adapt, from the inhibitory learning approach and empirical findings, the most promising strategies for the exposure-based treatment of pathological health anxiety. The exposure-optimizing strategies adapted are expectancy violation, combination, variability in contexts and stimuli, affect labeling, and removal of safety signals. A case example illustrates how to implement these methods for patients with pathological health anxiety.     

THE RELEVANCE OF EMERGENCE THEORY IN THE SCIENCE–RELIGION DIALOGUE

In this article, I call into question the relevance of emergence theories as presently used by thinkers in the science–religion discussion. Specifically, I discuss theories of emergence that have been used by both religious naturalists and proponents of panentheism. I argue for the following conclusions: (1) If we take the background theory to be metaphysical realism, then there seems to be no positive connection between the reality of emergent properties and the validity of providing reality with a religious interpretation, though one could perhaps construe an argument for the positive ontological status of emergence as a negative case for a religious worldview. (2) To be considered more plausible, religious naturalism should interpret religious discourse from the perspective of pragmatic realism. (3) Panentheistic models of divine causality are unable to avoid ontological dualism. (4) It is not obvious that emergent phenomena and/or properties are nonreducible in the ontological sense of the terms; indeed, the tension between weak and strong emergence makes it difficult for the emergentist to make ontological judgments. My general conclusion is that the concept of emergence has little metaphysical significance in the dialogue between science and theology.     

The Causal Efficiency of the Passage of Time

Does mere passage of time have causal powers? Are properties like ??being n days past?? causally efficient? A pervasive intuition among metaphysicians seems to be that they don??t. Events and/or objects change, and they cause or are caused by other events and/or objects; but one does not see how just the mere passage of time could cause any difference in the world. In this paper, I shall discuss a case where it seems that mere passage of time does have causal powers: Sydney Shoemaker??s (1969) possible world where temporal vacua (allegedly) take place. I shall argue that Shoemaker??s thought-experiment doesn??t really aim at teaching us that there can be time without change, but rather that if such a scenario is plausible at all (as I think it is) it provides us with good reasons to think that mere passage of time can be directly causally efficient.     

NATURALISM AND THE PARADOX OF REVISABILITY

Abstract:  This paper examines the paradox of revisability. This paradox was proposed by Jerrold Katz as a problem for Quinean naturalised epistemology. Katz employs diagonalisation to demonstrate what he takes to be an inconsistency in the constitutive principles of Quine's epistemology. Specifically, the problem seems to rest with the principle of universal revisability which states that no statement is immune to revision. In this paper it is argued that although there is something odd about employing universal revisability to revise itself, there is nothing paradoxical about this. At least, there is no paradox along the lines suggested by Katz.     

MUSIC OF THE SIKH DIASPORA: DEVOTIONAL SOUNDS,MUSICAL MEMORY AND CULTURAL IDENTITY

This paper explores the role of devotional music in the construction of Sikh identity in diasporic contexts. In particular, it examines a heterodox Sikh community in the UK and an orthodox Sikh community in Hong Kong from a comparative perspective, showing how music helps to clarify continuities and discontinuities in Sikhism worldwide. I provide ethnographic accounts of musical performances in different locales within gurdwara-s. Following a summary of current conventions in Sikh music performance and pedagogy, two ethnographic accounts are provided. The first is a musical ethnography of the Namdhari Gurdwara in Leicester where Hindustani classical music is performed alongside traditional ritual genres. The second site is a similar ethnographic study of the Khalsa Diwan Gurdwara in Hong Kong where the issues of diasporic identity and musical memory are foregrounded.